Burning Brightly
by adlyb
Summary: It's hard to be a child in a woman's body. Renesmee learns that age has more to do with state of mind than with the size of one's body. Jacob lends a hand.


**Burning Brightly**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: All content belongs to Stephenie Meyer.

A/N: Originally written in spring 2009. Just found it in a pile of old files, thought I'd put it up. Enjoy!

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><p>She's somewhere between womanhood and adolescence, though she's still a child. Six years old and already faced with the frightening changes of growing older, then, after the timeless stretch in which her hair grows daily, her bones shift continuously into new, unfamiliar diamond planes and her flesh bunches into comely womanly curves—nothing.<p>

"There's not a single other child as special as you," her mother would tell her as she tucked her in. "Not a single one."

Nessie keeps those words in mind as she straightens the folds of her favorite doll's dress, even as she comprehends that there is more than the spot of sunlight on the floor that makes her toes sparkle. There are books of poetry that she pours over, words to be learned and forest paths yet undiscovered that she knows she will one day tread. There is the knowledge of Jake's skin, the dear warm texture of his calloused hand when he tousles her hair, the knowledge of the way her father taught her to touch the ivory piano keys with reverence, the knowledge of blood as it gushes over her hands and dribbles down her chin.

She has no playmates (not really). Too fast and too deft to play with other children, too mature not to frighten them away like so many sparrows with the easy shrug of her slim white shoulders, the toss of her head as she laughs, the sharp teeth gleaming.

There is an air of expectation hanging about her like a shroud—her parents waiting for her to leave them, Jake waiting for her to realize (one day) that she is a woman. She ignores it, like she ignores the alarming heat that writhes inside her body, the desire to warm herself, starting with inside and working her way out. The changes have a certain smell to them, one that makes her wrinkle her nose and hope that she is the only one that notices. Of course, she knows that she isn't—she can tell from the way Jake shuffles his feet, looks the other way.

The strange thing is that it takes her so long to realize how different she really is. In a world where every adult is carved from glittering stone, an eternal expression of _is_, never_ was_ or _will be_, it's hard to understand how every other person lives. When everyone you know exists outside of time, transcendent photographic negatives of a century long dead, it's hard to understand the way strange men wriggle their eyebrows at her, to decipher the catcalls on the street. Harder still when she is only six years old and the blurred world is past its billionth year of timeless circuitry.

For these reasons she is lonely.

Occasionally, her father will catch these thoughts (and how can she resent him, when it is she who is forcing her own thoughts on everyone else?) and he will remind her of their great love for her and, should that fail, of Jacob—dear Jacob, who is not cursed with so much extra space inside his head, who, though beloved, can never hope to keep up with her, a mere of child of only six years of age.

For these reasons, she is alone.

At night her parents rock her to sleep with stories related in their gentle voices—stories from long ago that sometimes even she can recall but are adapted from their gruesome realities into gossamer fairytales. Her favorite is the story of Nahuel, the only other exactly like her. Her father retells the story each night for years, and if she often falls asleep, only to dream of her dark prince, he never mentions it in the morning.

But of course, Nahuel does not exist in the tired immediacy of Renesmee's reality. This is the reason she decides to do it.

In the safety of the Olympic wilderness, Nessie, now fully grown into her strength and speed, is allowed to wander with freedom. It's not often that her mother does not go with her, rarer that Jacob is not by her side. Today, though, she is alone, and something miraculous happens.

She is running, the rain splashing coolly against her over-hot body (her innards satisfied, if yearning for _more_), when she smells the blood. It isn't the dilute blood of animals to which she is accustomed. The blood she smells makes her nose tingle, forces the unfamiliar reflex to sneeze.

Renesmee stops, opens her mouth to taste the power latent in that scent and remember her babyhood, when she was given human blood freely at the cost of no life. It was only after, when they insisted she drink the tart blood of animals (that she may not be tempted), that she learned the crush of bones, the sticky matt of bloodied hair beneath her sticky sweet baby fingers.

Now her fingers are long and white and there is a dull longing for carnage within them that she fights for the sake of the human she can smell but cannot see.

But a vampire is a predator, as, for that matter, are humans, if with infinitely less prowess. For this reason Renesmee has no choice but to surrender to the potent instincts that instruct her to follow that scent.

She is not prepared for what she finds.

Her nose has led her to a back road, where a car has been violently wrapped around a tree. At first, it seems all are dead, and she prepares to move on. Then she hears it—a faint mewling. Stepping closer, she spies a child strapped into the backseat, blood flowing freely down his plump cheeks.

She licks her lips. "Hello?"

The mewling does not stop.

Carefully, Nessie pitches forward, tearing the iron frame apart to reach the child. The blood is hot over her hands as she lifts him out to safety and looks him over.

He is such a tiny thing, she thinks. She cannot tell his age—a few months?—and she is desperately curious, but first she must ask, "Are you hurt?"

The child turns his teary eyes to hers and says his head is hurt and that he wants his mother.

Renesmee glances at the corpse in the front seat. "Shhh," she sooths, "I'll be your mother now." The words come out before she's had time to think about it, but she finds she rather likes the idea.

The child clings to the front of her shirt, his grimy hands clutching at her hair, smearing blood over her neck.

The scent is overwhelming. Later, after Renesmee has licked the child clean of all his precious blood, sealed those shallow head wounds that resulted in so much blood, she will tell herself that it was necessary. For now, there is only the pleasure.

When the child is clean, she remembers her curiosity. "How old are you?" she asks the child.

"Six," he answers.

Six! Just like her. Perhaps, she thinks, he will be her little playmate.

Her happiness is subdued when he asks, "Where is my mother?"

Nessie cannot bear to tell him she is dead, so she tells him that she has gone on a trip and that she, Renesmee, is to take care of him. She cannot squelch the excitement that bubbles within her when she learns his name.

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><p>She does not take him home with her. Renesmee is wise enough to know her parents will take the child from her. Instead, she hides him in the brush, brings him a tent and food and some of her toys and books and promises to be back for him. She does not worry, because the weather is warm and there is no danger; where she has hidden him, no one will find him (not even a vampire).<p>

That night, her mother reads her _Romeo and Juliet_ and Renesmee asks her why they should be so foolish as to kill themselves and her mother gives her a special smile that Renesmee does not understand and says she will understand when she is older. Secretly, Renesmee thinks the story sounds suspiciously similar to the one her father tells about the girl named Bella and the boy named Edward and how they almost died in Italy.

She falls asleep and does not think of the child again for two days. By then the child is wailing, and she is afraid another predator will find him. "Shhh," she says as she lifts him and pats his back. Intuitively, she knows that she cannot comfort him with her thoughts; her power will inevitably frighten him, and she could not stand it if he were afraid of her.

He complains of thirst, so she brings him to a stream and watches him drink. She finds him berries she is sure are good to eat and cooks him fish.

When he is finished he again cries for his mother.

She is annoyed by his constant sobbing, but, instead of nagging him, tells him they are going to play together. He asks what game and she settles on hide and seek. It is very easy to beat him, but it is fun, and, although she thinks much faster than him, she understands his feelings and his observations in a way she has never understood the bewildering emotions and opinions of the adults who surround her. Renesmee has never had the experience of playing with another child, and, although she is initially incredulous that he is truly the same age as her, she soon realizes that age has more to do with state of mind than with the size of one's body.

She tucks him into bed that night and promises to come back tomorrow.

She does.

When her mother asks why she keeps playing by herself, she replies that she is building a special place for herself.

She actively does not think of her little friend, lest her father figure her out, and always showers before she sees her parents so that she does not smell of him.

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><p>Pleasant weeks pass as Renesmee bonds with the child, passing up opportunities to see Jacob daily. She overhears him talking to her mother about it one day as she is leaving.<p>

"I just don't understand," he says. "A month ago she loved seeing me. Now—"

"It's just a phase, Jake. She's just trying to gain some independence. That's perfectly natural in a child her age."

He laughs. "Yeah, I guess. Sometimes it's just too easy to forget…" The end of his thought hangs in the air like smoke rings. "Still, it seems strange."

Renesmee slips through the house, and, once outside, hurries through the undergrowth. Jacob's words distract her as she greets her little friend, and she slips when she hugs him. Her bare hands press his face, allowing her thoughts to pour into him.

She snaps her hand back.

The child is frightened. He backs away, and then he is running.

Renesmee stares blankly at him for a mild second. She lets him run, toddling father and farther away on his chubby legs. From the distance he begins to resemble an animal. Renesmee takes a step forward. The wind gusts, and then Renesmee is moving after him. She calls his name, the wind carrying her voice as inhuman shrieks to the child's ears.

He glances over his shoulder just as the sun comes out, revealing her vampiric heritage. The child pumps harder, scrambling to run away. His flight angers her—how dare her little friend run from her!

Just a step more and she overtakes him, wrapping her glittering arms around his tiny frame. Beneath her long white fingers she feels the gentle and familiar crush of bones, followed by the sticky matt of bloodied hair beneath her beautiful fingers that could touch the piano with reverence.

The world shifts to a stop.

In her arms, the child is dead.

Renesmee feels a certain degree of horror as she gazes upon the still face of her friend, frozen in eternal terror. She reaches a hand out, caresses the skin of his face as a means of a last goodbye. Her hand trails lower until it reaches the spongy flesh of his neck. The skin is still warm where her hand touches him. She is unable to resist the urge to touch her lips there. Just a kiss, she assures herself. Then her mouth opens, into the most lascivious of wet embraces she has ever bestowed upon another. She feels the heat rise within her, the burning need and she remembers when it was possible to enjoy lush blood without taking any lives. She gasps, and her teeth sink into the child's soft, limp neck.

The joy of the blood overwhelms her. She does not remember this sharpness, how the liquid makes her mouth tingle, almost painfully, before it finally warms that secret spot inside of her.

She hears the brush of stealthy footsteps and looks up.

Jacob stands maybe forty feet away, frozen. His quick dark eyes flick from her to the dead child and back.

She follows his eyes down, taking in the familiar features of her friend. Immediately she drops the body, trembles as she swallows the last remnants of blood coating her lips, tongue, teeth.

Jacob does not ask what happened. He takes her in his arms until the violent shuttering has stopped, though he offers her no comfort and will not look at her. When she is finished, he picks her up and takes her home, all the while saying nothing.

Her father meets them at the door. His eyes train on Jake and he nods, asks, "And the body?"

"I'll take care of it." Jake's voice is hard and quiet and still he will not look at her.

Her father's hands are no different, no less loving, than they have ever been when he leads her inside. He takes her to her room and tells her to play with her dolls, he'll be back in a minute, he just needs to talk to her mother.

Renesmee obeys, though it is lonely to play alone. She dresses each doll (untouched for weeks now) in a nightgown before brushing the glossy artificial hair and putting them to bed.

Her mother steps in the room some time later, her smile a wobbly wave on her face as she suggests to read her a story. She has already finished _Romeo and Juliet_, _The Taming of the Shrew_, _Macbeth_, and a plethora of others. She decides to begin _King Lear_.

Warm and comfortable in her bed, Renesmee listens with complete attention as her mother reads, her lovely bell-chime voice enveloping each syllable. The voice melts the troubles of the day, until the child's death no longer causes her alarm, his memory a distant thing of the perpetual yesterday.

"Good my Lord," her mother reads, imitating the voice of Cordelia. "You have begot me, bread me, loved me: I return these duties as are right fit, obey you, love you, and most honor you." Her mother continues the speech, revealing Cordelia's decision not to revoke her lackluster words of love. "But goes thy heart with this?" her mother reads, voice comically low like a man's to denote King Lear. She smiles as she reads, her voice lilting up once again for Cordelia, "Ay, good lord." Her mother pauses, reads, "So young, and so untender."

Renesmee cannot tell whose line this is because her mother does not pitch her voice.

"Mother?"

Her mother repeats the line again, softly, and then cries, quiet, tearless sobs that Renesmee cannot stop, no matter how reassuringly she pats her mother's arm.

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><p>AN: Please review if you enjoyed it or just to tell me what you think!


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